Small Silver Coloured Bar Pobjoy Mint Limited

Imohtep,

From your use of all-caps, I just want to say sorry if I offended you in any way. It wasn't my goal. The point I was making is the vast majority of people would not recognize that the lion, facing left on all 4 legs in the center of the bar, is a representation of silver. But .925 or .999 is a well-known way of stating such and has been for more than 100 years. That's why Pobjoy marks their coinage with the latter and not the former. Essentially, what you describe is what I would call esoteric knowledge. Kind of like if someone saw the mark below on a silver-colored bar. Some small percentage of the population would instantly recognize it for silver, considering the fact that it is a known- in certain circles- alchemical symbol for the element. The rest of the world... not so much. Again, my point was, why the obfuscation when, through the process of standardization, it would have not only made sense but been easy to mark it as sterling, if that's what it was? Even if Pobjoy knows the symbol you mentioned represents silver, the consumer might not. And its the consumer that keeps them in business. Regardless of whatever it turns out to be, I personally wouldn't accept it as silver anymore than I would accept a computer that looked like as Dell in every way as being one without the name brand plastered all over it. But that's just me. It's just an opinion but I don't agree that anyone should assume its silver since the company that made it didn't clearly designate it as such to the masses.

Just wondering if any update on this yet - I'd be interested in knowing if it is indeed the same composition as the set or not?

Norm

Thanks for posting the dimensions of this piece. Using these dimensions, it has a volume of about 0.75 cc. Given that sterling silver has a density of about 10.4 g/cc, this indicates a weight of about 7.8 grams. Can anyone suggest a reason why this piece at 9.19 grams is about 15% heavier than it should be for sterling silver? Not being silver was my 1st thought but what else could it be?

I would hazard to guess that this made of pewter which is denser than silver

I have googled about pewter and the consensus is that pewter IS heavier than silver.

The Isle Of Man is however not part of the UK (it is part of the British Isles though). UK Assay laws therefore may not necessarily apply (I don't know for sure they don't, much of IOM law is based on UK law so it would be wrong to assume they don't but then it would equally be wrong to assume they do).

Sadly from the lack of progress on this it looks like it may have to remain an "is it/isn't it" mystery.

Norm

Personally, I don't much care for consensus in science. After all, the vast majority of people in Europe once reached a consensus that the world was flat. Their belief did not make it flat nor did it obviate the opinion of the 1% who were correct. This is the cool thing about science: truth trumps numbers.

From http://www.ramshornstudio.com/pewter.htm, we have...

"Tin (Sn) is a relatively soft and ductile metal with a silvery white color. It has a density of 7.29 grams per cubic centimeter...".

Since pewter is generally 90-92% tin, we can see that the density of pewter will be closer to 8 than it is to silver's density of 10.5, even if the other 8-10% were to be of a higher density than tin. For 10% of the alloy to have a significant effect on the density of pewter, it would have to be very heavy, like gold, tungsten, or platinum.

Here is a great table of the elements that can be sorted by various parameters, including density:

http://www.lenntech.com/periodic-ch.../density.htm

As others have determined, the object in question is a "mint set medal", thrown in as a freebie with a Pobjoy Mint proof set in imitation of The Royal Mint proof set medals, which are similarly rectangular.

I suspect it isn't silver. The Royal Mint medals aren't precious metal, either; they're silver-plated, at best.